Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The Presidential Game

I received a free copy of The Presidential Game to review
for The Oldschoolhouse review crew.Two teams, one Democrats and the other Republicans, “battle” for control of
the electoral votes in each state to win the presidential election of the United States. The object of the
game is to collect 270 of the total 538 electoral votes by the end of the
game.As
few as 2 players can play and the game is geared toward players age 11 and
up. The game retails for $35.

I tasked each one of my kids with reading the directions
before we could begin play and all 3 failed at the task.Ultimately, I read the directions and then
explained the object of the game for them to begin.Princess (age 16) was the Democrat playing
against her younger sister NuNu (age 12) who was the Republican.Following the rules of play was relatively
easy but what we didn’t truly grasp from the beginning was the best strategy
for winning the game.However, strategy did become clear
toward the latter part of our first game.

Here is what’s great about this game:

gives
a basic understanding of how presidential elections are won in this
country

players
get an idea of which states are influential in elections

players
bring a better understanding of the campaigning candidates do in real
presidential elections (i.e. the states they spend the most time in and
why)

great
opportunity to review US
geography

great
opportunity to sharpen mental addition/subtraction skills

I must say that my 16 year old brought a better appreciation
of the game to the table than my 12 year old as were playing.My 12 year could follow the rules of the game but often times didn’t
get the point.They both enjoyed the
funny anecdotes of the political cards.NuNu
commented that the political cards made the game fun.

To keep the game moving along, I found myself acting as a
campaign analyst much like the banker in Monopoly.I kept track of which states my girls wanted
to campaign or fund raise in and I kept the electronic electoral map found at
The Presidential Game website.In this
observing role it became clear how one could secure his or her position in a
particular state and how to secure the most votes to ultimately win the
game.

On the most basic level I think it is important to note the
following regarding strategy:

Take
note of the states that have the most electoral votes.

Commonsense says to campaign or fund raise in these states
first.These states include New York, Florida, Texas, & California.When players campaign they decide on 3 states
to campaign in and roll their 3 dice.The value of the dice decides the number of votes (chips) that go in each
of the 3 states.Obviously you can only
get a maximum of 6 votes in a given state in each turn.However if you fund raise you add the value of
the *3 dice and must place at least half of that value in NY, FL, TX, CA (the
states with the highest electoral votes).In this scenario you can put as much as 18 votes (chips) in those
crucial states.With this information,
strategy becomes clearer.

Pay
attention to how far you are in the game.

Each turn corresponds to a week in the presidential
campaign. You decide
the number of weeks (turns) you will play at the beginning of the game.We opted for 15 weeks of play (15 turns for
each team).If you know you want to
knock your opponent out of a crucial state, pay attention to how many votes (chips) they
have in this state. If you can take it from them with time in the
game for them not to regain it back, you can secure your position.NuNu never glanced at the score but Princess kept her eye carefully on
the score and based her plays on the score and how strong her position was in
several key states.This proved smart in
the end as she won the election by a landslide. Below is a picture of the electoral map that I used at The Presidential Game website. The results of the final election:

Here are some of the sticking points in the game that we had
a little trouble understanding:

I
never grasped the point of the paper score card if I was keeping track on the
electronic map.I couldn’t figure
out if I was supposed to be adding chips (votes) or the electoral votes on
the paper pad.

The
game doesn’t account for half votes.When fundraising there were times when the value on all 3 dice
equaled an odd value (13 for example).If a player
only put half of her votes in a designated state we just rounded that vote
down (we put 6 in the fundraising state and 7 among other states). The game rules do not address this.

3. No one understood what to do with the blank political cards. However, after seeing how my fellow crewmates played this game I understand that you can get creative and make your own political cards.
4. If two
candidates are in the same state with an equal amount of votes does the
state become neutral?We just
always made sure someone dominated in each state if only by one vote
(chip).

**The election rules that come with the game don't state how many dice
to roll when fundraising. At the The Presidential Game website it
states to roll only 2 dice when fundraising. We used 3 dice in our
games.

This game will come out again perhaps shaking up the teams with different family members to test out several strategies for winning. Great learning game!